Own yourself.
An open-source protocol that lets anyone build a space that belongs to them — not to a platform, not to an algorithm. Identity is portable. Trust works like it does in real life: people vouch for people.
What You Build Here Is Yours
Every connection you make strengthens the network you own. Kunuleco gives regular people the tools to build spaces they actually own. We will never show you ads or sell your data.
Kunuleco (meaning "fellowship" in Esperanto) is community infrastructure you own, built on 25 years of protocol development. The techno speak is that it's a distributed, identity-based community framework.
The reality is that it's a toolkit for regular people to create and share spaces that are safe, self-determined, and truly theirs. It empowers individuals to form organic communities built on trust that is human-scale and pro-social. No central authority. No landlord. No algorithm.
Yours
You own your identity and your data. No platform can revoke it, sell it, or change the rules on you. Your cryptographic keys, your community, your space.
Human-Scale Trust
Trust isn't a score or a checkmark. It's earned the way it always has been — person to person. Our Standing model (Newcomer, Familiar, Trusted, Steward) reflects how real communities work.
Federated
No central server. Nodes connect directly over encrypted channels. Your community can't be copied, moved, or taken away by anyone — it belongs to its members.
How It Works
Nodes, Places, Capsules, Objects
A Node is the foundation of everything in Kunuleco — it's the software that stores your identity, your data, and your connections. You might run it on your own computer, on a server you control, or eventually through a hosted service. Either way, your data lives on your node, not on a corporate server.
Nodes are organized around a spatial hierarchy that mirrors how real communities work. Places are communities. Capsules are personal environments within Places. Objects are the things you create and share.
You can create multiple Capsules for different contexts — family, professional, creative — each with its own rules for sharing and interaction.
Your Space. Your Rules. Forever.
Unlike platforms where you rent your presence, Places in Kunuleco belong to you. No algorithm decides what you see. No corporation can shut it down.
Portable Cryptographic Identity
Your identity is built on KERI — a cryptographic key management system that's portable and self-sovereign. You control your keys. You can rotate them if compromised. Your identity isn't tied to any server or platform.
This means you can move between communities, take your reputation with you, and prove you are who you say you are — without anyone else's permission.
How It's Different
Traditional platforms own your identity — they can lock you out, sell your data, or disappear. In Kunuleco, your identity is yours cryptographically. No one can take it, fake it, or revoke it. Not even us.
Capability-Based Security
Think of capabilities like keys to specific locks. Each one grants access to a specific action on a specific object — not a broad role or permission level, but a precise, granular permission that does exactly one thing.
If someone invites you to their Place, they grant you specific capabilities. If trust breaks down, capabilities are revoked. Fake identities are useless because people grant access to people, not accounts.
Trust Built In
Every interaction is authenticated. Every document can be cryptographically verified. Every state change is signed. Trust should be provable, not assumed.
Urchin: The Desktop Client
Urchin is a Godot-based desktop client available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It uses a spatial metaphor: your community is a Place you can see and navigate, not a feed you scroll.
Urchin is not a web app. It's a dedicated application that runs on your machine and connects directly to the network. No browser required. No middleman.
Under the Hood
Identity: KERI — self-certifying identifiers with pre-rotation for key recovery
Security: CapTP — capability transport protocol for granular access control
Transport: Veilid + Tor + mDNS — encrypted P2P with local discovery
License: AGPL-3.0 (core), MIT (specs), LGPL (SDKs)
Who Is This For?
Anyone who's tired of building communities on someone else's land.
Families & Close Networks
A private space for your family, your congregation, or your circle of friends — where conversations stay between the people who are actually in them. No ads. No data mining. Just the people you trust.
Neighborhood Groups
Local communities that blend online coordination with real-world connection. Organize events, share resources, and build resilience with tools you own. No Facebook required.
Creative Collectives
Focused spaces for people with shared passions. Share work, collaborate, build reputation — without the noise and algorithms of general-purpose social media.
Privacy-First Teams
Organizations that can't afford to put their communications on someone else's server. End-to-end encrypted, capability-secured, with a verifiable audit trail.
Interest Communities
Book clubs, gaming groups, hobby communities, sports leagues — any group that wants a dedicated space without platform drama, algorithmic interference, or surprise policy changes.
Developers & Builders
Open source, AGPL core. Build on top of Kunuleco's identity, capability security, and document layers. LGPL SDKs for integration. We welcome contributors.
Where We Are
Architecture & Core Protocol Complete
KERI-based identity (AIRO/PIRO/SEER), capability security (CapTP), four-tier Standing model, spatial hierarchy (Platform/Place/Capsule/Object), and the Authenticated Document Layer specification. 25 years of distributed systems thinking, formalized.
Alpha Live Now
The Urchin desktop client (Godot 4) is running on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Live nodes communicate over Tor. Cross-node chat, media sharing, room creation, and the tutorial system are functional. The transport stack is operational: Veilid (primary DHT), Tor (privacy routing), mDNS (local discovery).
Building Now
Persistent user and node links (contact lists and subscriptions across sessions), a simple Android client, and security hardening across both the node and Urchin frontend.
Coming Next
Standing trust implementation, Authenticated Document Layer (formal document lifecycle with structural, semantic, and procedural validation), Founding Fellowship crowdfunding campaign, and third-party security audit.
Beta & Beyond
Visual network layer with WFC cartography (procedural terrain seeded from cryptographic material), navigable trust topology, community themes and customization, ADL derivative document types, push-to-talk voice, and Phone-as-Authenticated-Controller for mobile.
Questions
Those are great projects solving different problems. Mastodon and Bluesky are federated social media — they give you a better timeline. Matrix is federated chat — a better Slack. Kunuleco gives you community infrastructure you own. Places, identity, trust, governance, documents — all cryptographically secured. We're building the layer underneath, not another app on top.
Kunuleco uses the Standing model. Standing is earned through participation within communities — not assigned by algorithms. There are four tiers: Newcomer, Familiar, Trusted, and Steward. Each reflects a relationship between a person and a community, not a number. A score is not Standing. A metric is not trust.
Kunuleco is in alpha. Cross-internet P2P communication over Tor works. Cross-node bidirectional messaging works. Media sharing works. Room creation and the tutorial system are functional. Desktop clients run on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
We're currently building persistent user/node links, a simple Android client, and security hardening. The Standing trust model, Authenticated Document Layer, and Founding Fellowship crowdfunding campaign are on the roadmap.
Right now, in alpha, it helps to be comfortable running software on your own machine. That's why we're building toward hosted tiers for people who want the ownership without the sysadmin. The protocol is always free and self-hostable. The hosted service is the product.
The core protocol and node software are open source (AGPL) and will always be free to download and run yourself. We make money by offering premium services on top of that free foundation:
- Hosted nodes: We run and manage your node for you, so you get ownership without the sysadmin work. Monthly subscription.
- World Creator tools: A visual editor for building and customizing your community's spaces — the power-user tier.
- Enterprise support: Management dashboards, moderation tools, and dedicated support for organizations running Kunuleco at scale.
Think of it like WordPress: the software is free, but many people pay for hosting, themes, and managed services. The protocol stays free. The product is convenience.
To get here, we're launching a Founding Fellowship crowdfunding campaign — building a community of believers before we take institutional money.
Yes. We're in alpha and accepting testers. Request access below. Fair warning: it's alpha software — things will break, the UI is rough, and we're iterating fast. But the architecture is real, the crypto works, and the community is forming.
Join Us
We're building this for people who believe communities should own themselves. If that's you, come build with us.
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